Sheaf Saint

It's especially baffling when you consider that Bree was only signed as emergency backup while Tino is still injured. To throw him in tonight, at the expense of a FB who was our best player on Saturday, is just mental. So Perraud comes on for Lyanco and now we are onto our 4th different defensive formation of the evening. Wonderful.

Just how much more evidence does he need that a back 3/5 doesn't fucking work with the personnel we have? Every time we have tried it so far - and I do mean every time - he has had to end up ditching it mid-game because we're getting carved open. So instead of learning that lesson, he goes and fucking does it again. Sets us up so badly that Newcastle cruise into a 2-0 (3-0) lead chucks away a decent chance of a cup final. Absolute fucking clown.

Che reverts to type there.

So is Edozie going to play LWB? Surely Perraud would have been the obvious replacement?

Oh great and now KWP is injured.

I'm hoping it will convince Jones to accept he is out of his depth and resign.

What an absolute fucking shambles. Pathetic setup, formation, tactics... everything. Just fuck off back to the lower leagues where you belong Jones. This is embarrassing.

Where was the fucking marking!?

Perhaps @Turkish can bob along and keep watch on him for us.

Do you honestly think the board have just been sat on their hands since 1st January and only started trying to do deals yesterday?

Looks like he's an upgrade on Djenepo at least.

Oh crap I forgot about Ings. I was referring to Carillo.

Surely worthy of his own thread now that Fabrizio Romano is reporting it's as good as done and will be a club record transfer fee. No pressure then. What do we know about him?

He's got to be better than our previous record signing!

OK fair enough. But the power still rests with the player. The transfer will only happen if the player wants to join the club that has met the release fee. Vitinha obviously doesn't and wants to join Marseille instead.

So if we meet the release clause, and another club comes along and bids 2m higher, they have to accept our offer regardless? Seems odd. And I expect the terms would differ from contract to contract. I doubt there is a universal rule covering this.

Not sure it works like that. It's more of an Ebay auction whereby you have to bid more than the starting price and the highest bidder still wins. But, as you also point out, ultimately it comes down to the player. If we were the only club to meet the release clause, but he doesn't want to come, nobody can force him to sign.

I think, for the sake of my mental health, I should keep away from this thread for the rest of the day.

Can I have this week's lottery numbers please?

The odds are obviously stacked against us, but then Sheffield Wednesday managed to knock them out of the FA cup, so stranger things have happened.

Hoedt is a superstar. But only in his own head.

Well I've been biding my time very carefully before offering any really strong opinion of Jones (apart from the very understandable knee-jerk reaction after that Forest performance), and I was all in favour of giving him a chance to prove himself worthy, but I have to say my patience is wearing very thin now. Feels like that wonder-week was a long time ago now. And when you look at it, the performance against City was obviously just a freak that we're not going to see repeated anytime soon. Before that we scraped past Palace thanks to two howlers from Guaita, and afterwards we were lucky to come up against an Everton team who are seemingly imploding even more than we are. Since then it has been normal service resumed. We had a short spell during the Villa game where we looked like we might get a goal, but then reverted to type and conceded against the run of play due again to pathetic marking and discipline from a set-piece. That's on the coaching team I'm afraid. Newcastle in the first leg last week was predictably dire, and then against Blackpool - a team struggling in the lower half of the Championship - we relied on two goals from a LB to get a lead and then tried our best to chuck it away with a horrendously dis-organised and panicked last half an hour. When we appointed him, I opined that just because he hasn't proven himself in a top league yet, doesn't mean that he doesn't have it in him to do so if given the opportunity. Well now he has been given the opportunity and everything about his whole persona screams 'lower league manager with a chip on his shoulder'. I am still of the opinion that one day he may well go on to become a moderately successful PL manager, but right now we do not have the luxury of affording him that time to learn his trade. What we needed when we sacked Ralph was for an experienced manager with decent top league pedigree who would make an instant improvement to our performances, and what we've got is the complete opposite of that. If ever someone like Jones would have been a good appointment for us, it would be after we've been relegated and he would come in to build a promotion-winning team in the Championship. From there he would have some momentum to carry forward into the PL with the squad that he coached to get there. That could work. I am now completely resigned to the fact that we are going to be relegated this season. I just don't see any encouraging signs that we are going to improve enough to get the points we need to stay up now. Yes you can point the finger at our horrific lack of quality up front. But, as Puel worked out, if your forwards aren't doing the business then make sure your defenders are and make yourself hard to beat. We're not hard to beat, despite Jones' protestations otherwise. 7 defeats in our last 8 in the league and no clean sheets - mostly against bottom half teams - shows we are actually very easy to beat. That's on the manager.